17.
Rory
We park the van away from the compound and trek on foot through the wooded lot and my eyes narrow cautiously when we come upon a darkened figure standing just inside the tree line, somewhere he couldn’t be seen. Hands on my gun, I slow down to scan the area for any other bodies, holding my breath in preparation for battle.
I raise my weapon, only to let out breath, lowering it back down, when I see the darkened figure is Tommy Doyle. Thank Christ.
“We got a problem,” Tommy starts in a low voice once we’ve reached him. “I put out feelers to find out what’s been goin’ on. Although the Sheriff’s Department and TPD usually work together, Rodrick’s targeted me, tryin’ to make it look like I’m in on shit. It’s because of my connection to the Lords and that I been thwartin’ his attempts to put the screws to the women. So the Sheriff’s Department ain’t lettin’ TPD in on any of their plans.”
“The whole department in on this?” Boss asks.
Tommy shakes his head. “Nah, I think they’re all believin’ one of their own because he’s one of their own. Don’t think the rest of ’em are involved.”
Well, there’s that. It’s bad enough we got war with the Horde; don’t need war with the entire Sheriff’s Department as well. We decide to spilt up, half of us going left and half of us going right to case out the joint.
While casing the grounds, it becomes more and more difficult to avoid being seen by the Horde, who keep showing up—from loud, rumbling pipes disrupting the stillness of the countryside, to loading trucks with wooden crates I know have to be product.
I fucking hope it’s not all product because some of those crates are huge. It’s probably the first time in my life I pray for illegal guns.
Other men unload cardboard boxes of varying sizes, but none as large as those damn crates. The goddam Horde pushing all this product on the streets, ruining lives, taking lives. Watching the sheer volume of the operation, I lay my palms to my forehead, knowing that once I get my lassies back, I have to do anything I can to keep this shite from hurting them or anyone else’s family.
I turn to my brothers to see that the looks on their faces match mine, which means unsurprisingly, their thoughts match mine, too.
Each of them get a head nod from me, and they each return one to me, then we move as a unit toward a couple of outbuildings. We keep to the shadows, moving around the corner of the closest outbuilding to the warehouse when Crass points out a door leading inside the main building, darkened even blacker than the shadows we’ve been keeping to. Not a sliver of moonlight strikes that side of the outer wall.
Brothers at my back, I move quietly from the outbuilding to the door and gently check the knob to see if it’s locked. It twists in my fingers and I crack the seal. There’s more light inside than out, but it doesn’t flood through the inch or so I pull it open. They’re keeping the lights dim in that area, which works in our favor.
I slide inside, not having to look over my shoulder because I know my brothers are with me.
There’s a Horde infestation.
Time for duck and cover.
Time to get my family back.
18.
Frankie
They must have a huge order to fill because I haven’t seen this many men since I woke up here.
And as gross as it is, even with my body broken from that asshat Rodrick, I see a lot of men giving me eyes. What kind of low-class caveman do you have to be to put eyes on a woman with a broken wrist, limp leg, broken nose, cuts and bruises on like every part of her body and unable to stand straight because of probable broken ribs?
Hell, I suppose my nether regions are the only part of me in full working order. What else do guys need?
One of them, a disturbingly handsome guy, keeps following me both literally and with his eyes, but what I notice the most is that granola bar he keeps taking small bites from like mouth porn. My stomach growls. I lick my lips. If he thinks it means more than what it does, so be it. My last bowl of soup was like a day ago.
I’ve never hit on a guy, so looking like I’ve been crushed under a dump truck that was driven off the top of the Empire State Building and managed to survive, I’m not feeling my most confident, but I need food and my babies need more formula and diapers. Then I need to check on Brighton.
Standing up to my full height as much as possible, I attempt to saunter, to look somewhat sexy, but sauntering doesn’t really work when you’re hobbling and dragging a lame foot behind you.
As his eyes go wide and they settle with heat, I figure I chose correctly. It feels like a million lifetimes go by before I reach him, which means my word come out breathier than I mean it to be when I say, “Hi.”
The breathy works.
“Hey,” he says back.
There’s longing in my eyes, but it’s for his food, not him. I love Rory. I’d been foolish enough to hope that this time would be our time, that we’d have forever, but if giving myself over to this guy means I can save my girls and Brighton, then that’s what I have to do.
He chuckles. It sounds nice. Really nice. I mean, he’s taller than average, broad shoulders, lean hips and powerfully built thighs. Thick, wavy black hair and closer to a six o’clock shadow rather than five o’clock cover his cheeks, chin and upper lip. His eyes are a shade lighter than his hair and that works really well with the olive in his skin tone. If he weren’t a Horde, I’d introduce him to Brighton.
My fear is that because he is Horde, he’ll eventually make his way to Brighton, and she’s good. She’s kind. She’s fun and funny and doesn’t deserve to be used and abused by a man who, judging by his choice of friends, is likely to use and abuse a woman because he can.
“Got another one of those?” I ask, pointing to his bar.
He smiles at me and I prepare to hear him respond with, “What will you give me for it?” Or some version of that. What I don’t expect to hear him say is simply, “Sure,” before digging into his pocket to withdraw a bar and hand it over. He doesn’t even toss it to the floor to make me scramble for it like an animal and give him a laugh. He simply hands it off. I tear into the wrapper, biting into the tastiest peanut-butter-and-chocolate-chip granola bar ever processed in the history of the world.
“Slow down there. You’re gonna make yourself sick,” he admonishes with what sounds like actual concern. This doesn’t make any sense. He’s a Horde. A freaking Devil’s Horde.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
He points to the name patch. “They call me Vlad.”
I don’t want to ask, but I have to. Despite everything going on around me, it’s a moral imperative to ask him, “Why do they call you ‘Vlad’?”
He smiles again. “Because Imma impale her.”
And that’s when it happens. I bite my lips to hold in the laugh until it turns to crying. I needed this release. I’m scared and I’m hurt. My best friend is hurt. All I want is for the four of us to be safe, the girls and I sleeping in my giant bed at Rory’s.
“My girls, they’re running out of formula and are probably running out of diapers. Please, we need help. I need to see Brighton, to see how she’s doing. Rodrick hurt her. I’ll… I’ll do anything—” I drop my voice on the word ‘anything’ to let him know without saying the words what I’ll be willing to do in return for his help. “Anything you want if you take care of things for us. Full participation. You have my word.”
He gives me a strange look that I can’t read, especially considering that he’s a Horde. The Horde, I’ve found, don’t give meaningful looks unless they’re of the anger or hatred kind.
“Keep away from Rodrick; he’s unbalanced. What size diapers do the girls wear?”
How does a biker in a biker gang go from telling me a man is unbalanced to asking what size diapers the babies wear? How does a biker in a biker gang even know that diapers come in different sizes? His words confuse me, but I nod. “I’ll avoid him. Girls wear three.”
“Keep away,�
� he says, then pushes off the wall to leave. I still don’t know what he’s going to want from me for this favor, but I promised I wouldn’t put up a fight. And I won’t.
I don’t know how much time has passed between when that bastard knocked my ass out and when I came to. The last thing I remember was the sole of his boot coming down on my face and then nothing. Now that I think about it, it was probably ridiculous for me to have propositioned Vlad, but most of these men would probably glean great pleasure out of sullying a Lord old lady.
“Hey, bitch,” one of the men I’ve only seen come and go over the past few days yells over to me. In my normal life, I’d have taken great offense to being addressed as “bitch,” though I try to be nice to just about everybody because you never know what kind of day that person has had or how your words affect them. Here, though, I hear “bitch” and turn to look. I learned that on the first day. “Brats won’t shut up. Shut them up or I’ll shut ’em up.”
I nod, then make my way along the wall to the room where the girls are. Every breath hurts. Walking makes me feel like I have to vomit and I only just had that bar, so I don’t want to vomit. Brighton’s not in the room when I finally get to them. Tears fill my eyes because I don’t have a clue as to where she’s been taken, but they also fill with tears because the moment my foot hits the threshold of the doorway, my nostrils burn with the caustic aroma of baby poo. No wonder they’re crying. Even my easy-tempered Mollie has a breaking point. And that diaper definitely reached it.
My poor babies. When I begin talking, they start to calm, but it’s only momentarily because once I reach the cot and they see my face, Macie specifically screams even louder. My face must look like hamburger to get her to reach those decibels. Still, mostly one-handed, I unbuckle and lift my girl; she’s leaked right through the onesie she’s been wearing. Not just poo, liquid poo. And no Brighton to change them.
“You’re okay,” I say in a singsong voice. “I’ve got you again.” Scud never brought wipes, which means I have to waste a diaper cleaning her up and there are only three left. Thank the good lord Vlad agreed to help me. Her skin screams angry bright red, sores open in spots, meaning she’s been sitting in shit for quite some time.
Mollie is soaked through, but she’s nowhere near as messy as her sister. Like Macie, I leave Mollie lying on the cot on top of a clean diaper but let them air out while I turn to fix them bottles.
The water for their formula is gone. How long have they been without food or water? Cripe—they’re babies. They need to be checked out by a doctor. This can’t be happening. I know Vlad is going to help. I know I’m going to have to fuck Vlad to earn his help. Where the hell do they have us stashed that Rory hasn’t found us yet? The clouds at the top of a giant beanstalk? I can’t do this anymore… I can’t do this anymore… My hands grip my head and I rock back and forth on the cot, attempting to calm myself down. The sobs sound so foreign, like they aren’t coming from me, but they are. They are because I don’t know how much more I have in me to take.
But it’s my fault that we’re here. I’m the one who started it back up with Rory even after I found out he was with the Lords. I let Elise and Caitlin convince me that the Lords were a clean club now and took what Rory offered. Took it to the point that when I found out that they dipped their toes in the vigilantism pool, I didn’t properly consider what all that entailed. He was shot and I was still too stupid drunk on that man to give it up. They don’t just dip their toes in a pool; they’re the British navy conquering the whole freaking vigilante ocean. And that creates enemies. Enemies that brought these two baby girls and the best friend a woman could ask for low. So damn low. Too damn low.
19.
Scotch
We drop behind one of the crates as four Horde round a corner from another area of the warehouse. The three of us could take ’em, but we have to be careful not to show ourselves just yet. I hate waiting to begin with, but this is excruciating. We’re so close to finding them, I can taste it.
When it’s clear, each man bends to keep low as we jump behind another crate, slowly, quietly, rounding more corners every time a voice comes near us. It’s like we’re playing a damn game of gun-crate-hopscotch, one crate at a time until we reach a shadowed bit of wall. The door’s cracked only slightly open, but I can hear the low whimpering in a higher voice. My muscles go tight. My stomach drops. Because if that moan comes from a dude, then his boys ain’t dropped yet. That’s a goddam woman.
I turn to look over my shoulder at Crass and Blue and by their hardened faces, it’s obvious that they’ve heard it, too. I nod once to let them know my intensions and keeping to the shadows, I jet to the door, peering inside first. When I see no one in the small space, I push the door open more to sneak in, my brothers on my heels. There’s an empty cot and the room is dark. Then I see her, slumped in the corner like a pile of dirty laundry. But it’s not my Frankie. It’s her best friend, Brighton. Fuck.
So much fucking fuck.
Blood soaks her T-shirt from wounds that I can’t see until we get a better look at her. She looks worked over. Her breaths come harsh and shallow, but at least she’s still breathing. We crawl across the floor to her. Her eyes open to slits and she whimpers, but with all the blood around her mouth, I think her jaw is broken.
“We gotta get her out of here,” I whisper. “Hey, Brighton, it’s me, Scotch. This—” I point to Blue. “is Blue and that”—I point to Crass—“is Crass. We’re here to help. It okay we touch ya?” Her head nod is hardly visible, but it’s there. “I gotta find Frankie,” I say to Blue.
“Got her,” he replies as he moves to lift her but is forcefully shoved out of the way by Crass.
“Don’t fuckin’ touch her,” he growls. Both Blue and I whip our heads to stare him down. “Hey, sweetheart.” He aims the softest voice I’ve ever heard from the bull at the scared, broken woman in front of me. “I got you now. Gonna get you safe.” Gently, he slips one arm under her, around her back by her shoulders, and the other he slides under her knees, then pushes up from the floor. When she whimpers, more blood oozes from her mouth. Tears leak from the corners of her eyes. “Got ya, sweetheart,” he keeps cooing. “Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you again. Safe now, baby.”
At the word “baby” Blue and I catch each other’s glares, knowing shite just got even realer than it had been. Though Blue doesn’t have an old lady yet, he’s well-versed in the ways of the biker and knows what I know, “honey,” “sweetheart”—those’re ubiquitous words for any woman. But “baby,” “baby”’s a word ya use for a woman ya plan on depositing in yar bed and keeping her there for a good long while.
Whatever he sees in her, he’s able to see it through the blood and bruises, meaning this woman is in the best hands possible and she doesn’t even know she’s been folded into the family. Another one bites the dust. Brighton just became an old lady whether she fights it or not, which she probably will because we ain’t that lucky, and that means shite’s gonna continue to go down because since Elise came into the picture, brothers get pulled through the wringer in a quest to win the hand of their lady in question—and they fucking drag the whole club along with ’em. And no, it’s not lost on me that I’ve dragged my club into my business with Frankie.
Brighton’s normally pretty eyes, now enormously swollen, barely slits to see through, she keeps them trained on Crass. Blue and I ain’t even in the room any longer, even if we’re standing right next to her.
“Checking the coast is clear,” I tell the men. They nod and I slip out of the tiny room for real. Left. Right. There’re Horde everywhere and I’m unsure how to go about getting her out without being seen.
Checking left a second time, I catch a familiar face out of the corner of my eye. Boss. Behind him is Chaos. And next to him, Blood. Reinforcements have breached the walls. Thank fucking Christ. I point to the crate nearest their group. It takes Boss a second to realize it’s me, but once he does, he nods, then leads the brothers to the crate. From there, t
hey play the same game of hopscotch we did, weaving and dodging, keeping out of Horde radar. I slip back inside the room.
“Boss and the boys,” I tell Crass, who’s losing patience quickly if the clench of his jaw means anything, and at this point, it sure as hell does. Three men slide inside with us. Their faces when they see Brighton say what words never can. It’s how we’re all feeling.
“Ain’t that Frankie’s girl?” Boss asks.
I jerk my chin up. “Brighton. Hope to god that this means Frankie and the babes’re close. We gotta get her outta here, though.”
“Blood, Chaos, go with Crass. Keep his path clear unless—Crass you need one ’a the brothers to take her for ya?”
For his answer, Crass growls low and menacingly, like a pit bull protecting its family.
“Fair enough,” Boss replies. He gets it. Every brother in this room gets it.
After popping my head out once more to check how much time we’ve got to pull this off and counting five Horde moving around a little too close for comfort, I retreat back inside with the brothers. “Okay, we’ve got five getting close. If ya keep low and reverse the route we came in,” I tell Crass, “with Blood and Chaos at yar back, it’ll be close and not remotely comfortable… but ya just might pull this off without anyone getting dead.”
He nods, then slips out, crushing his back to the shadowed wall once more. Keeping low. Blood and Chaos flank him. Blue, Boss, and I watch until he drops behind the closest crate, then I turn to track down my wee lassies and woman.
Scotch: Unraveled (Brimstone Lords MC Book 4) Page 16